Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.csd.uwm.edu!wuarchive!texbell!vector!telecom-gateway From: cowan@marob.masa.com (John Cowan) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Canada - U.S. Communications Message-ID: Date: 30 Aug 89 16:08:39 GMT Sender: news@vector.Dallas.TX.US Reply-To: John Cowan Organization: ESCC, New York City Lines: 33 Approved: telecom-request@vector.dallas.tx.us X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@vector.dallas.tx.us X-TELECOM-Digest: volume 9, issue 337, message 2 of 12 In article , Ilya Goldberg writes: >In article , telecom-gateway@vector. UUCP writes: >>...If two country codes were >>used for these two telephone-intensive countries, it would provide >>some near-term relief from the rapidly-approaching exhaustion of >>available area codes. >Actually, no, unless you want to go to 12-digit international numbering. >The reason is that there is only one single digit code (namely '1') >and this would go to the US. But then no other country can get a >two-digit code which starts with a '1' (there is a rule that says >country codes must be distinct in this way). Therefore, if Canada and US >had country codes, they would have to be two-digit codes, both starting >with a '1'. Well, with 11-digit international numbers, that >would leave only 9 digits for the national number, which is not enough. a) I believe that the USSR is assigned country code 7, so there is another dialing system with a 1-digit country code. b) The above implies that 11 digits is a hard limit for all phone numbers anywhere in the world. Is this true? I had thought that after the country code was recognized by the local system, any number of digits could be passed, and the local system either has to hear end-of-number (the # key) or else just wait until the caller seems to have stopped dialing. Not so? Does anyone have hard information on this? (Bellcore?) Internet/Smail: cowan@marob.masa.com Dumb: uunet!hombre!marob!cowan Fidonet: JOHN COWAN of 1:107/711 Magpie: JOHN COWAN, (212) 420-0527 Charles li reis, nostre emperesdre magnes Set anz toz pleins at estet in Espagne.